Saturday, March 23, 2013

Thank God tomorrow we'll be done with all the sanctimonious counter-posturing that are the complaints about Earth hour, which are equally useless and probably not coming from a good place.

People - if you think the idea here is to do away with capitalism and modern technology I think you've rather missed the point.

When I was in elementary school I remember we had this book that was something like "365 things you can do to save the planet" - one for each day. My parents weren't hippies or anything - it was just a good kids book with a lesson, etc. etc. I remember feeling like the book contained solemn duties. I wasn't weird about it or anything, I just remember feeling like this was important. It was the planet after all! And it was stupid little stuff. Conservation, conscientiousness, and instilling the value that you know what: the place isn't here just for you.

That's all Earth hour is.

It's just a hokey awareness raising effort that has more to do with responsible lifestyles than anything else - and absolutely nothing to do with the overthrow of capitalism. And honestly there is something genuinely solemn about that mindset. I got that element right at least, and I was just a dumb kid.

So stop complaining. You sound like an idiot.

5 comments:

I've participated in earth hour a few times before. I take it as a reminder of the technology I take for granted. For me, that hour mostly represented an hour of contemplation about my place in society and the technology that sustains it. So really, it serves a similar purpose to directed meditation. I think that the right-wing attack on earth hour comes not only from a complete misunderstanding of its purpose, but also a kind of subconscious insecurity with just how much of a negative impact we're making on our world.

So, I'm like THE person to bitch about it, but I haven't because it's fairly harmless. There are bigger fish to fry, like to stop encouraging consumption patterns that help the middle and upper class (relative to the world) at the expense of the poor.

But I don't know anyone who was really over the top about it. I don't think "look at the facts, douchehead" is sanctimonious counter-posturing, and that's much more harshly worded that anything I've seen. Sometimes you are too focused on flipping the point of the narrative and miss the point. Cite someone.